Hub Hospice Palliative Care is a local organization that is here to help someone with a life-threatening illness who is being cared for at home – wherever the client considers home – in the Mississippi Mills and North Lanark area.
The palliative care team offers compassionate, confidential, respectful support to clients and their families. Under the supervision of a registered nurse, a specially trained volunteer will come to where a client lives to listen, read, talk with, or simply provide companionship. Through the program, caregivers can also be given a few hours to rest, take care of errands, or allow time for themselves so they can maintain their ability to give care.
When we read about a local palliative care project being organized, it spoke to both of our hearts and to two different experiences. Both of us feel that facing end of life, or, being close to a person facing end of life, is one of the biggest and most difficult times of our lives.
Compassionate palliative care helped Lise and her family through the loss of Lise’s mother many years ago. Lise remembers the kindness, honesty, and respect the palliative care nurse showed, both toward her mother and to her family, and how this support and her compassion made such a difference to the family through this difficult time.
When Sandra’s grandmother was dying, on the other hand, she and her family had the frustrating experience during this already emotionally painful time, with the sense of a lack of compassionate end of life care. She and her family struggled with authorities to help their family member be as comfortable as possible as she was dying.
We were really pleased when a program geared to compassionately accompanying families through this challenging time would be available to people in our community, and we knew that this was an initiative we wanted to support wholeheartedly. We started with a simple mason jar by the cash register to collect ‘pennies for Hub Hospice’ (as the Canadian penny was removed) and are matching the amount donated by customers. To date customers alone have contributed more than $235.00! The next concept that we are unrolling is the “Cheese of the Month”. Each month this year, one special cheese will be ordered in and 10% of the proceeds from sales of this special cheese will be donated directly to the project. Pick up a piece of Le Clos St-Ambroise, March’s Cheese of the Month, and know that you are helping to contribute to a valuable community initiative.